Privacy in New Media

When it comes to certain aspects of New Media, for example social networking, the user really does not have much privacy. Take facebook, people can see what your doing, what day and time your doing it, who your friends with, who you share stories with (for instance on your facebook wall page), where you go (pictures), who your family and friends are, and if you add a status, what your doing at that exact moment. There really is not much privacy. Granted, you can choose to have privacy or not, by changing your privacy settings, or not accepting someone as a friend, or even by simply not updating your status every 10 minutes. However, once you are friends with a person on facebook, you really can see very far into their private life, and privacy is no longer private.

Our Class Wiki- So Far

Besides the assignments we have had to do on the Class Wiki, I started to edit a Virtual Worlds page. Advantages and disadvantages of virtual worlds is what my research paper topic is, so i have learned quite a bit about this subject. I went to the homepage, and added some information I thought was important in knowing what Virtual Worlds are. I discussed how virtual worlds can help people with disabilities or even self-esteem issues. I also explained about what people might do through their avatar character.

Since this has been the only page I have edited, I plan on editing others that I have some knowledge about. As it comes closer to the finishing of my research paper, I also plan on adding more information on the virtual worlds page that I have already edited. I will probably discuss some of the disadvantages of it, since there are not explained anywhere on the homepage.

The Next New Thing

Many of us love shopping online. It's easy, fun, and always exciting waiting for your merchandise to be delivered to your house. Well, what I would like to see, which I guess you could say is a type of "new media," is something like a virtual closet. You can download a full length picture of yourself, and attach the clothing, shoes, jewelry, etc. to the image of yourself, and see how you would look with it, before you decide to buy it. I know from experience, that there have been times where I ordered clothes, and they didn't fit right, or just didn't look good. This is a chance, to virtually see how the clothes may look on you, and help your decision alot more on what you want to buy. It may sound a little far-fetched, because of course trying something on your actual body is better than trying it on virtually, on a clothing website, but I still think its a fun idea.

Advice to Baruch College

On top of tuition, books is just another thing we have to pay for when going to school, and they can be quite expensive. What I would like to see Baruch have is a e-books link on their website where all class textbooks are available to read. Students can just click a link and have the textbook right on the screen in front of them, instead of having to purchase it at high costs at a bookstore or carry all these heavy books to class (and all over the city) when usually most teachers ask to leave the textbook at home. And since there would be no cost on paper or printing, the e-books can be cheap or possibly even free.